Taiwan’s Lu exits final Grand Slam of year

Staff writer, with CNA

Wed, Sep 04, 2013 - Page 20

Taiwan’s Lu Yen-hsun and his partner, Divij Sharan of India, were eliminated in the third round of the men’s doubles at the US Open on Monday, ending Lu’s run at the final Grand Slam of the year.

Lu and Sharan were defeated by fifth seeds Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi of Pakistan and Jean-Julien Rojer of the Netherlands 7-6 (8/6), 3-6, 6-3 in a match that was disrupted by rain.

After the duo lost the first set, they had the chance to regroup during a four-and-a-half-hour rain delay and bounced back to take the second set in 38 minutes.

However, in the decisive third set Sharan was broken while serving at 1-2, and he and Lu were unable to create up any break-point opportunities against their opponents, sealing their fate.

Lu was satisfied with the duo’s overall performance, especially with him and Sharan playing together for the first time.

“They’ve played doubles together for a while and are more cohesive, but today we played pretty well. It’s just too bad we didn’t win the first-set tiebreaker,” Lu said. “They just had more experience and served better than we did, and it was hard to find openings when returning serve.”

Still, Lu, who puts most of his emphasis on singles and admits to not having as good a feel for doubles tactics, was pleased with reaching the round-of-16 and giving the fifth seeds a scare.

“For a team that was playing together for the first time to have that kind of a result is already pretty good,” Lu said.

The 30-year-old Taiwanese veteran’s stay at the US Open ended with the loss. He had already been eliminated in singles by a straight-sets second-round loss to 13th seed Tommy Haas.

Lu, who played in the US over the summer, now returns to Taiwan to take a break, before playing in tournaments in Asia the rest of the year.

Two other matches involving Taiwanese players on Monday were postponed by the rain.

Hsieh Su-wei and China’s Peng Shuai were due to face 15th seeds Jelena Jankovic of Serbia and Mirjana Lucic-Baroni of Croatia in the third round of the women’s doubles, while Chan Hao-ching and Germany’s Martin Emmrich were scheduled to face Kristina Mladenovic of France and Daniel Nestor of Canada in the quarter-finals of the mixed doubles.